Andrew English checks out the new Ford F150 pick-up at the Detroit motor show
and wonders if the Transit van will replace it as the commercial vehicle of
choice.

Ford’s F150 is one of the world’s best-ever selling vehicles and has been America’s best-selling pick-up for 36 years. So no pressure for this new one, which was unveiled in concept form as the Atlas at the Detroit motor show.

Europeans tend to come over rather sniffy about these gargantuan vehicles, but you need to remember they are commercial vehicles, built to do a job and the equivalent of a European van. Americans don’t really do vans, so the concept of the manic white van driver, with a Thermos and copy of The Sun on the dashboard, driving two inches off your bumper at whatever speed, is alien to the land of the free. That might be about to change as the archetypal van, Ford’s Transit, is to be introduced to the US along with its smaller sister, the Transit Connect. Of course we’d like to say that these would have been made at the company’s Southampton factory, but Henry is closing that down.

“We’ve been amazed at just how big your vans are,” said Sean McAlinden, chief economist for the Center for Automotive Research. American’s amazed at large stuff from Europe? Remember where you heard it first...